


There But for the Grace of God

by adiwriting



Series: City of Fallen Heroes [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6705637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adiwriting/pseuds/adiwriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an old enemy comes back to seek revenge on Oliver, he'll be unable to save Felicity and their child...</p>
            </blockquote>





	There But for the Grace of God

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my "City of Fallen Heroes" verse, set a few years before that fic starts.

Felicity is sitting at her desk, keeping a close eye on the situation with Oliver when the first bomb goes off. It’s so close that it shakes the very foundation of the building and dust falls from the ceiling. Then a second bomb goes off, this time even closer, and a large part of the ceiling collapses down not even 10 feet from her, causing her to yelp out in surprise.

“Felicity!” Oliver yells, not even bothering with her codename. She knows that means he must be terrified.

“I’m okay,” she reassures him. “The lair may not be, but I’m okay.” 

“Felicity, lovely,” she hears a thick Australian accent come over the coms. She freezes in fear. It’s been years since she’s heard that voice. She’d prayed she never had to hear it again.

“I’m terribly sorry about this,” he says, sending a shiver down her spine. “But I made your husband a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“Slade don’t,” Oliver says, practically pleading, but it’s no use. Felicity hears what sounds like a sword slicing through skin as Oliver groans.

“Oliver!” Felicity yells out.

“Don’t worry my dear,” Slade says with a condescending tone. “Your boy Oliver here will be fine. He’s not the one I’m about to kill.”

“Felicity!” Oliver cries out, his voice is strained.

“I told you, Kid!” Slade yells. “I told you what would happen!”

Felicity hears an unfamiliar beeping sound in the lair coming from under her desk. She doesn’t stop to look and see what it is. She stands up and moves as fast as her 8-month pregnant body will allow. She stumbles down the stairs just as a 3rd bomb goes off inside the lair, knocking her down to the ground.

“Oliver,” she calls out, coughing around the ash that is now filling her lungs.

“Slade, you don’t have to do this,” Oliver says.

“I told you that I would make you suffer,” he says. “What better way than to force you to listen to your wife and child die while you’re stuck here, helpless to stop it?”

Felicity tries to stand up, but the second she puts weight on her leg she’s screaming out in horrible pain. There’s a piece of metal from her desk sticking out of her thigh.

Then, without warning, without any beeping to let her know another hit is coming, a 4th bomb goes off, knocking Felicity unconscious.

****

Oliver struggles to breathe around the pain in his chest, wondering just how much time he has until he bleeds out and dies. He has to get to Felicity. He has to save her, but he doesn’t know how. Slade is currently blocking his exit from the room and even if he wasn’t, Oliver isn’t sure he’s capable of standing at the moment.

“How are you even here?” Oliver asks, trying to make sense of the entire situation, rather than focusing on the fact that Felicity stopped responding over a minute ago and it’s felt like eternity.

If Slade has killed her and his unborn daughter, he doesn’t care about morality or living in the light. He doesn’t care about his promise to Tommy that he wouldn’t kill anymore. Oliver will find a way to end Slade Wilson even if it’s with his last dying breath.

“You mean how did I get off the island where you were keeping me prisoner because you were too much of a coward to kill me?” Slade mocks him, coming into the room to kick him as he tries to stand up.

“Haven’t you punished me enough?” Oliver asks, stopping to cough and groaning when he ends up coughing up blood.

“There will never be enough punishment in the world to make up for what you took from me,” Slade says.

“And you’ve taken people from me!” Oliver cries. “Don’t do this. I know the real you has to be in there somewhere. The man that called himself my brother wouldn’t kill a woman I love, a woman who is carrying an innocent child…”

Slade kneels down to look Oliver in his eyes, his face contorted into a condescending grin. “Is that desperation I’m hearing in your voice?”

Oliver uses the little strength he has left to grab hold of one of his arrows and stabs Slade right in his good eye with it. Slade falls backwards, crying out in pain, but Oliver doesn’t stop there. He grabs the sword that Slade used to stab him and slams it into his chest to make sure that he won’t come back and threaten them again. Without the Mirakuru in his system, there is no reason he should be able to live through his injuries. Just to be safe though, Oliver will call Lyla and have ARGUS take care of Slade’s body. For now, he has to make sure that Felicity is alright.

The room starts to dim as stars appear in his eyes, but he can’t pass out. Not until he knows that Felicity will be okay. He reaches for his cell phone and is barely able to pull up his recent call list. His fingers slip on the phone from all of the blood on his hands, but he’s finally able to at least place a call.

When Roy picks up, he begs him to get to the lair and help Felicity.

Then everything fades into darkness.

****

When Felicity wakes up, it’s to a sharp pain in her uterus.

“No, no, no,” she whispers, stroking her pregnant belly to try and calm the baby down. She has a vague idea of what is happening, but it can’t. It’s too early. She can’t give birth right now. She’s only at 34 weeks. “You’re okay. You’re okay. Let’s just stay put for a few more weeks. Can you do that for Mommy?”

The sharp twisting feeling that has her gasping for breath tells her that no, her daughter has no intention of staying put. Which is just wonderful, because Felicity is incapable of moving and by the looks of the rubble the lair has become, there is no chance of her calling for help.

She doesn’t know how she’s expected to deliver a baby — a premature one at that — without anyone’s help. She has to get to a hospital.

Felicity puts her hands on the ground under her and attempts to sit up. It’s a tall feat for her these days even without an injured leg, but with one? It’s nearly impossible.

She shrieks and covers her stomach protectively as a slab of concrete falls from the ceiling a few feet away. When Felicity really looks up for the first time, she notices that a great majority of the ceiling has already collapsed and several pieces of furniture from the campaign office above has fallen down into the lair. The rest of the ceiling hardly looks stable enough to hold on for long.

Surely, help has to be on the way. There is no way that 4 explosions have gone unnoticed by the police. They will come and investigate soon, and when they do, she’ll be saved. She just has to hold on long enough for help to arrive.

With renewed hope, she’s able to push herself up into a sitting position. When she moves to check the wound on her leg, she notices the blood pooling between her legs.

“No, no,” she whispers, rubbing her stomach in what she hopes is a soothing manner for the baby. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. We just have to hold on a little bit longer, okay, Baby Girl?”

She bites her bottom lip to keep from sobbing, knowing that the increased stress will only make things worse for the baby. It’s hard, though. Nearly impossible. She’s terrified. For all she knows, Slade Wilson has already killed Oliver, and now she may be losing her daughter as well.

How had this even happened? How had Slade Wilson even broken out of his cell on Lian Yu? For days, they’ve been tracking suspicious activity in the Glades, but she never imagined that it would lead them to Slade of all people. On the list of most hated villains, he certainly took the cake. She still remembers the months of terror that he reigned down on them with him and his Mirakuru army. Sure, other enemies had been bad, but none of them had been quite as vicious or single minded in their pursuit to make Oliver’s life a living hell as Slade.

Felicity cries out as another contraction hits her.

How close together is that? She remembers something about timing her contractions. Isn’t that what Oliver had read in the baby book he’d bought? That they would know when it was absolutely time to go to the hospital based on how far apart her contractions were? The closer they are together, the closer she is to delivering.

Expect, she can’t deliver. Not here. Not now. Not for another 3 weeks at the earliest.

She has to find a way to stop the bleeding and slow her contractions. It shouldn’t be hard. The lair essentially has all the same tools as any major hospital, she just has to find some… Except the med bay area is currently covered in rubble. There’s no way she’ll have the strength to lift the concrete blocks off of their equipment so that she can search for the necessary drugs.

The longer she sits down here without anyone showing up to help her, the more she begins to fear for herself and the baby. Typically, when things look bleak, she has an unwavering faith that Oliver will find a way to protect her. However, if Slade has really stabbed Oliver and is determined to kill Felicity, she doesn’t think there’s anything Oliver will be able to do to help her.

“Felicity!” she hears somebody yelling in the distance, but it’s hard to hear over the loud ringing in her ears that she’s just now noticing.

“Felicity!” the voice yells again, and when she looks up, she sees Roy jumping down into the lair through one of the holes in the ceiling, like it’s nothing.

“Are you okay?” he rushes over to her and she shakes her head. His eyes widen as he notices how much blood is now staining the blue maxi skirt she’d been wearing.

“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Roy says, moving to pick her up, but she cries out in pain as another contraction hits her.

“I don’t disagree with you,” she says through gritted teeth, trying to get a handle on the pain. “But how exactly do you plan on doing that?”

She points to the elevator, that’s blocked by several large slabs of concrete.

“Stay here,” he says, causing her to snort. As if she could go anywhere. Roy then moves over to the elevator and begins the slow process of moving all of the concrete out of the way.

Felicity gasps as another contraction hits her.

“Stop that,” Roy glares at her. “You are not having your baby in this lair, Blondie.”

“Actively trying not to,” she says. “How did you even know I was here?”

“Oliver called me.”

Felicity gasps, expect it’s not in pain this time. It’s in relief. “Oliver called you? He’s alive?”

“Yeah. He sounds like he’s in rough shape though. I sent Digg and Thea to go get him,” Roy says. “Remind me to thank you later for the trackers you put on all of us.”

“And to think you used to give me a hard time for those,” she says, aiming for light hearted, but it comes out as a groan as another contraction hits her. “I don’t think Baby Abby is going to be able to wait much longer.”

“Well tell her she has to!” Roy says. “I’m moving as fast as I can. These things aren’t light, you know? Lay down some parent discipline. You might as well practice now because you and I both know that Oliver is going to be Mr. Soft.”

“Really? With how overprotective he is, I’m sure he’s going to be the strict one,” Felicity says, holding her hands over her stomach and praying that Roy can get them to the hospital in time.

“Yeah, you may be right on that one,” Roy says through gritted teeth as he pushes a particularly heavy piece of concrete out of the way. The elevator is almost cleared enough that they can slide through… assuming it’s still working.

“When will you learn, I’m always right, Harper,” she jokes, trying to keep things light so that she doesn’t have to focus on all of the very terrifying what ifs.

“Wait a second… Did you say Abby? You and Oliver finally picked a name?” Roy says, grinning up at her.

“Yeah. We wanted it to be a surprise, but now… Well if you’re possibly going to have to deliver Little Abby yourself, you may as well know her name,” she says.

“There’s no way in hell I’m delivering your baby,” he tells her. “We’re getting you to that hospital on time.”

About 10 minutes later, Roy finally manages to clear enough space to get them onto the elevator and by some grace of god, it’s still functioning. Even more surprising, is that there’s still enough floor left for them to make it from the elevator to the doors. At which point, Roy puts her in the passenger seat of his car and breaks every law getting her to the hospital.

By the time they make their way into the emergency room, news arrives that Oliver Queen isn’t far behind them coming in with a stab wound to the chest. Felicity begs the doctors to let her wait for Oliver, but they can’t. She is rushed into the delivery room. Roy never lets go of her hand the entire time. Not when she’s cursing everyone’s name when she’s informed that they can’t give her an epidural as it won’t take effect soon enough for it to be effective. Not when she’s sobbing and refusing to push without her husband at her side. Not when Abby is finally born and needs help taking her first breath. Not even when she’s informed that her husband has finally arrived and is being rushed into emergency surgery and Felicity loses her cool and begins trying to get out of bed and rush to see Oliver herself, despite the fact that she’s still got an awful leg wound.

Roy holds her hands the entire time until finally, her daughter is placed in her arms and she’s forced to let go. She’s her little miracle baby; somehow completely healthy apart from some minor health concerns that will require treatment.

So when Oliver is finally brought out of surgery and Felicity is wheeled into his room to introduce him to their daughter, there’s no question for either of them. Their daughter is no longer a Little Abigail Queen. She’s Harper Grace. After all, without Roy, Felicity isn’t sure that either of them would have survived. 

There but for the grace of god. Their little angel. 

And if the way Roy’s eyes fill with tears when he holds little Grace for the first time are an indication, he’s going to be an amazing uncle.


End file.
